need help managing too big PSTs. Alternatives?

[news]

I work in a printing press office, and our lead designer gets huge
e-mails constantly.
A few months ago when his PST closed in on 2GB, I created 5 PSTs and
split his e-mail among them and had him start moving e-mails into them
as necessary.

Well, now all 5 of his PST's are reaching 2GB.

Problem is, he can't just delete e-mails. He has to be able to access
e-mails from as long as 3 years ago. Daily he has to go back to old
e-mails.

I can keep making PST's, and moving older e-mails into them, and
closing them, and forcing him on pain of death to never open those
older PST's unless he absolutely has to, but there has to be a better
solution.

I ran SCANPST and compression on the PSTs. They're fit and as small as
possible, but he's starting to crash constantly.

Is there any other recommendation on what we can do to deal with this
constantly and forever growing e-mail problem? Without having to create
endless PST's?

Thanks!
Liam

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Upgrade him to Outlook 2003. Create a new Unicode PST file in the Outlook
2003 format, then import all the other .pst files to that. He's lose custom
views, forms, rules, etc. but there are ways to back up and transfer all
those. The hardest thing to restore is contact links.

The default max for a Unicode PST is 20gb, and that can be adjusted with a
registry entry.

 

[news]

Upgrade him to Outlook 2003. Create a new Unicode PST file in the Outlook
2003 format, then import all the other .pst files to that. He's lose custom
views, forms, rules, etc. but there are ways to back up and transfer all
those. The hardest thing to restore is contact links.

The default max for a Unicode PST is 20gb, and that can be adjusted with a
registry entry.

Huh. OK. Well, guess one day when we can afford Office 2003. =)
(I wonder if Thunderbird can handle larger e-mail files *eg*)
Thanks for the reply!

 

[Brian Tillman]

(I wonder if Thunderbird can handle larger e-mail files *eg*)

I believe Thunderbird keeps its mail store in a format whose limitation is
the Windows File Ssytem.